There is a consensus that measuring performance can be instrumental in improving value in U.S. health care. In particular clinical areas, such as cardiac and intensive care, measurement has been associated with important improvements in providers’ use of evidence-based strategies and patients’ health outcomes over the past two decades. Perhaps most important, measures have altered the culture of health care delivery for the better, with a growing acceptance that clinical practice can and should be objectively assessed.

Nevertheless, as we argue in the full-length version of this paper, substantial shortcomings in the quality of U.S. health care persist. Furthermore, the growth of performance measurement has been accompanied by increasing concerns about the scientific rigor, transparency, and limitations of available measure sets, and how measures should be used to provide proper incentives to improve performance.

The challenge is to recognize current limitations in how measures are used in order to build a much stronger infrastructure to support the goals of increased accountability, more informed patient choice, and quality improvement. In the following paper, we offer seven policy recommendations for achieving the potential of performance measurement.

1. Decisively move from measuring processes to outcomes.

There is growing interest in relying more on outcome measures and less on process measures, since outcome measures better reflect what patients and providers are interested in. Yet establishing valid outcome measures poses substantial challenges—including the need to riskadjust results to account for patients’ baseline health status and risk factors, assure data validity, recognize surveillance bias, and use sufficiently large sample sizes to permit correct inferences about performance.

While working to develop a broad set of outcome measures that can be the basis for attaining the goals of public accountability and information for consumer choice, Medicare should ensure that the use of performance measures supports quality improvement efforts to address important deficiencies in how care is provided, not only to Medicare beneficiaries but to all Americans. CMS’ current focus on reducing preventable rehospitalizations within 30 days of discharge represents a timely, strategic use of performance measurement to address an evident problem where there are demonstrated approaches to achieve successful improvement [6]. Read more.

3. Measure quality at the level of the organization, rather than the clinician.

Historically, the physician has been viewed as the leader of medicine, with responsibility for the care and outcomes of patients; in iconic photographs and paintings, the physician is seen as a lone, heroic figure. However, this focus on the individual is flawed for most measures of quality and presents substantial technical challenges. In recommending a focus on measuring outcomes rather than care processes, we consider surveys or other approaches to obtaining the perspectives of patients on the care they receive to be an essential component of such outcomes. Read more.

4. Measure patient experience with care and patient-reported outcomes as ends in themselves.

Performance measurement has too often been plagued by inordinate focus on technical aspects of clinical care—ordering a particular test or prescribing from a class of medication—such that the patient’s perspective of the care received may be totally ignored. Quality measure data should not only be technically correct, but should be organized such that their dissemination is a resource to aid in quality improvement activities. Read more.

5. Use measurement to promote the concept of the rapid-learning health care system.

Initiatives to promote performance measurement need to be accompanied by support to improve care. As such, quality measurement should be viewed as just one component of a learning health care system that also includes advancing the science of quality improvement, building providers’ capacity to improve care, transparently reporting performance, and creating formal accountability systems. Read more.

6. Invest in the basic science of measurement development and applications, including an emphasis on anticipating and preventing unintended adverse consequences.

The unfortunate reality is that there is no body of expertise with responsibility for addressing the science of performance measurement. The National Quality Forum (NQF) comes closest, and while it addresses some scientific issues when deciding whether to endorse a proposed measure, NQF is not mandated to explore broader issues to advance the science of measure development, nor does it have the financial support or structure to do so. Read more.

7. Task a single entity with defining standards for measuring and reporting quality and cost data, similar to the role the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) serves for the reporting of corporate financial data, to improve the validity, comparability, and transparency of publicly reported health care quality data.

There is a plethora of health care quality data being pushed out to the public, yet no rules to assure the accuracy of what is being presented publicly. The health care industry lacks standards for how valid a quality measure should be before it is used in public reporting or pay-for-performance initiatives, although some standards have been proposed. Read more.

Conclusion

The interest in promoting a health care system that rewards performance needs to be balanced with the practical challenges faced when measuring performance. Improvement requires substantial investments in the underlying science of measurement, greater care in communicating measurement results, greater attention to the role of measures in quality improvement efforts, and using performance data in more strategic ways. The adoption of flawed measurement approaches that do not accurately discriminate between providers can undermine professional and public support for provider accountability, reward indiscriminately, and divert attention from more appropriate and productive quality improvement efforts.

The authors thank Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Andrea Ducas, MPH and Anne Weiss, MPP of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their helpful comments on this paper. This research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where the report was originally published.

11 Responses for “Seven Policy Recommendations for Healthcare’s New Era”

Instead of vaguely Orwellian sounding “quality” measures which are truth be told largely negative marks assigned to an individual perp who is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong hospital, you’ll get more constructive and genuinely useful data with an emphasis on team performance …

“Measure quality at the level of the organization, rather than the clinician.
Historically, the physician has been viewed as the leader of medicine, with responsibility for the care and outcomes of patients; in iconic photographs and paintings, the physician is seen as a lone, heroic figure. Such a view has led to natural interest in the measurement of individual physicians’ performance. It is therefore not surprising that some information brokers, including the U.S. News and World Report and many city magazines like the Washingtonian, provide ratings of “top doctors,” often based mostly on reputation, warranted or not.”

From my years in engineering, I still hear “we’re faithfully reproducing the problem” ringing in my ears when I read #1. Making that one simple shift – to outcomes rather than process – would revolutionize the entire healthcare system. It would go a long way toward weeding out the resistance to price transparency, too, since I feel like the same cohort that’s resisting full disclosure on cost data is the same bunch that’s determined to follow a checklist to a bloody fault.

Reading this give me hope. Unfortunately, I don’t run a large health system or hospital. I’ve got my fingers crossed that those who do are reading it, and seeing its simple power.

A thoughtful and practical appoach – thanks for an important jump start to a conversation about what could really impact care. I would also like to see more effort at determining what goals (quality measures) patients value. They may be the same as those of their clinicians, but at least outside the hospital (where hopefully most spend almost all their time), they are the ones that have to do most of the work to reach those goals. Do they value the same goals? If not, is it because they perceive the effort as being too great, too inconvenient or too expensive? I think we could come up with far better approaches to getting patients to reach OUR goals for them if we better understood what they value and what made it easier/harder for them to incorporate suggested interventions into their lives.

Sandra_Raup is correct- Patients clearly have other legitimate values/goals besides maximizing their own biological health. As providers we need to cease the paternalistic practice of assuming that our patients’ values are the same as ours.

The EU stressed that this ruling applies only to Samsung and other companies are free to seek injunctions against competitors with SEP court cases. “The Commission attaches high importance to effective patent protection and an efficient patent system,” it said in the released on Thursday.

If the EU accepts Samsung’s offer it will enforce the deal under Article 9 of European antitrust regulations, and if the firm breaks the rules again it will be fined up to 10 per cent of its global turnover ?C which adds up to $17.86bn based on its latest figures. Crucially however, an Article 9 infringement doesn’t represent an admission of guilt by the company, thus saving the South Korean firm face.

Foxconn can confirm that a personal dispute between several employees escalated into an incident involving some 2,000 workers at approximately 11 pm last night in a privately-managed dormitory near our manufacturing facility in Taiyuan in Shanxi province. The dispute was brought under control by local police at approximately 3 am this morning. According to police, some 40 individuals were taken to the hospital for medical attention and a number of individuals were arrested. The cause of this dispute is under investigation by local authorities and we are working closely with them in this process, but it appears not to have been work-related.

While 15 per cent might sound like a lot (over 47 million people, according to the latest census data) the rate of online luddism is falling steadily – back in 2004 over a third of US citizens were offline.

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